


Love Gives of Itself

by likehandlingroses



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Sharing a Bed, snooping through bookshelves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23030071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: Men like them can't afford to sit easy with themselves for too long--Richard Ellis least of all.But if it's what Thomas wants, he feels bound to try.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 25
Kudos: 186





	Love Gives of Itself

**Author's Note:**

> Your standard warnings for period-typical homophobia (internalized and otherwise). Let's please also concede--for the moment!--that all dialogue can be held at the perfect volume and still not be overheard by anyone else. ;) 
> 
> Title comes from Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet."

The first time he’d felt like this, Richard had been nineteen—old enough to know better, but too young to care much. Sir Henry had thought him novel, entirely original. A queer thing to have poking about in his room, asking questions as he breathed—without pause and without thought. He’d laughed and petted him, indulging Richard in the moment but surely planning how to push him out of the room and lock the door behind him. 

People—people like them, anyway—didn’t like to be looked at so closely when they were naked. That person—the person who wanted another man in their bed—was someone separate from the man who moved in the world. 

Richard knew that. He lived it himself, on a regular day. 

But nights like this weren’t in the regular way of things, and Richard had never learned how to manage them. He was nineteen again, eager and soft and feeling as if the man beside him was someone he needed to see every part of. He didn’t know if it was becoming, and he was even less sure if it was fair, but it was how he felt. 

So Mr. Barrow—Thomas—would have to make do with him as he was for a few hours. 

They’d pushed the beds together, though just now, Thomas might almost have managed with half of a single bed. One arm dangled over the bed’s edge as he lay on his side and watched Richard tidy himself up. He was blinking slowly—once or twice, Richard thought he was on the verge of nodding off. He’d have every right to, really, after the night he’d had. Richard still wasn’t sure he was as alright as he pretended to be, but Thomas didn’t seem eager to discuss the subject anymore. 

He’d have to, sometime...but Richard didn’t begrudge him pushing the stone down the road a bit further. Men like them were always pushing something or other around...you got used to it, after a time. 

Richard’s eye, meanwhile, was stuck on the way Thomas arranged his room, the books he kept, the pictures on the wall...things no one ever invited anyone to look at or comment on, but told a rich story all the same. 

He raised an eyebrow at the postcard propped against the wall. 

“New York?” he said, and Thomas grinned. 

“I went a few years back, as a valet, when Mr. Bates didn’t want to make the trip.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t complain. I’ve heard stories.”

“We’ve all heard stories.” Thomas smirked, but after a beat of silence, it became clear he wasn’t about to say much on whether or not those stories were true.

Probably wasn’t in the mood, after tonight. 

“It’s modern, I’ll say that.” He’d leaned back, just a little, so his gaze was nearer the ceiling. 

“But?”

Thomas considered the question—one hand was tucked under his head, the other still tracing the side of the bed frame. 

“I’m not an American, and I don’t think I could be trained as one.”

“Too busy for you?”

Thomas shrugged. “Too hard, more like.”

Richard turned back to the side table, eyeing some of the framed photographs. He made to pick one up, but he noticed Thomas rolling all the way onto his back as he did. The movement stopped his hand, and a flush came into his cheeks. 

“You don’t want me looking,” he said in a low voice. Thomas opened his mouth but said nothing; Richard took that as answer enough. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I get...well, I’d call it soft, but it comes off nosy, doesn’t it?”

Overbearing, really. Too much, too eager. Wanting things before they were earned, that was his way. 

He wanted to be understood, and that meant understanding in turn. Or it was supposed to mean that, anyway. The perfected state of man was to share without quarrel. _Ask, and it shall be given you,_ and all that.

Except Man wasn’t perfect. Him least of all. He wanted more than he gave, same as the rest. Always hungry, always leaning across the table. He did a good job of hiding it, but Thomas would see it, now. Whether he could put up with it was the newest question at hand. 

Thomas turned back on his side, smiling again. 

“I’d call it comfortable, myself,” he said. “And you’re allowed to be.”

But he didn’t say anything more about the photographs, and Richard wasn’t about to ask.

“If you want to rummage through my things…” Thomas pointed lazily to the row of books on the far table. “That’ll give you something to go on…”

He wasn’t lying about not knowing many men like they were...half his collection seemed borrowed from the library of a particularly curious ladies’ maid—novels about the bourgeoisie...unhappily married men who met unhappily married women in unhappy cities and had unhappy endings. Tiresome stuff. 

Some Wilde, that was more standard...tucked between Shakespeares and Shaws. One especially well-loved copy of _Hamlet_ looked about to fall apart in his hands. 

Too much tragedy, on the whole, for Richard’s taste...but some people took comfort in it. 

He shook his head, aware of Thomas’s eyes on the back of his head—lazy but expectant. 

“Do you go to the theater, much?” he asked without thinking, turning back to Thomas. 

“Not _much,_ no…” he teased, as if the more accurate answer might be closer to “not ever.” 

It was as good an opening as any: 

“Suppose I take you sometime?”

Thomas looked stunned for all of three seconds before shaking his head, breaking into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. 

“What, fifteen months from now when we’ve both got the time and the money, but you’ve forgotten my name?”

He read too many of those horrid novels...

“I won’t forget you in a hurry, Mr. Barrow. Thomas.” The corrected name brought Thomas’s eyes up to meet his own. He looked dazed. “And I hope you’ll not forget me.”

Thomas ducked his head. 

“Don’t know why I said that, really…” he murmured, as if they both didn’t know what could usually be expected after a night like this. It hurt, to hear him say it, after everything...but expectations didn’t die without a fight. 

“You shouldn’t listen to me,” Thomas continued. 

“Can’t help that.” 

Thomas looked tickled—and more than a bit relieved that his cynicism hadn’t spoiled anything. He was beautiful like this—beautiful any way, really, but this was the first time Richard had thought it without any accompanying guilt—at ease in his own room, in his own bed...and Richard didn’t need to imagine what it would feel like to reach out and touch him because he’d already done it. 

He’d never forget that, even if a day came where he’d wish he could. 

“You know I couldn’t forget you,” Thomas said, echoing his own thoughts, only without the fear of what remembrance could bring. “And I’ll go to the theater with you...if you still want to, when the time comes.”

He was teasing, not afraid, and Richard smiled again. 

“Oh, I will, I can assure you.” 

Thomas sat up on his elbow. 

“Can you?” he said. The fingers over the edge of the bed twitched, and Richard felt summoned from his end of the room. “I’m not known for being easily assured.”

He lay back as Richard approached, making just enough room for Richard to sit beside him. His eyes followed Richard’s hand as it came up to his chest, resting just in the center of it. 

“But you’ll let me try, won’t you?” he murmured, as Thomas pulled him down by his arm for a kiss. 

They didn’t have much longer, and Richard needed so much more before he left...but he settled into bed as if they had forever, hoping he might trick himself into believing it were true. Anyway, there was no shortage of gains, here in Thomas’s bed-that-was-really-two-beds. The night had turned Thomas tactile, soft in a way Richard hadn’t known he’d be. It was already different from how they’d been on their way back from York. 

Thomas had told him it felt good, to talk with someone the way they’d talked to each other in the car, but it had been a “good” of a certain color. A hesitating, anxious, often awkward, good. A good that hurt, just a little...or maybe it only found out the places that already hurt and pressed on them a little too deeply. 

This good was different—simpler, less adulterated—and Richard wasn’t sorry for preferring it, for wishing it would stay always.

“Almost moved to Bombay, a few years back,” Thomas said, picking up a conversation about nothing, a conversation that wasn’t accompanied by nervous heartbeats and long stares out the car window. 

“Oh?” He almost asked ‘why?’ but the question seemed harsh, unnecessary. He knew he was right not to ask it when Thomas sighed against him just a bit too deeply before speaking again. 

“I have a cousin out there,” he explained. “Lots of sun, he says. I like that.” 

Someday, Richard would come back to the real world and would have to ask what the sigh meant, but it wasn’t right now, and thank God for that…

 _He likes the sun..._ the sun and tragic novels and the upstairs children and the theater if only he could find the time…

Dancing, crosswords, being kissed. Richard knew more than he was used to knowing about any man already. 

“Where would you go, if you had the chance?” Thomas asked, and Richard wondered if he was compiling a list of his own. What had Richard given away in the past few days, what hints had he dropped that Thomas might have scooped up and pondered over? 

He could think of one, at least...

“I like York, whatever you say.” 

“Not enough to stay.” Fishing, but Richard was happy to take the bait. 

“I like it enough to come back.”

Thomas kissed his shoulder. He liked doing that, too, Richard had noticed. He gave back what he was given, like it was nothing, when they both knew most people didn’t. 

“But I don’t mind London,” Richard continued. “When you come visit me—”

“—oh, _when_ I come visit you?” 

“I thought we’d agreed on that already?” 

He expected a laugh, or perhaps some more teasing—Thomas could be coy when he wanted to be—but instead, Thomas went quite silent. For the briefest instant, Richard felt his heart sink, but Thomas had a hand on his back that now pressed into his skin, pulling him closer. He was smiling, too, just a little. Blinking slowly again, his chest rising and falling so easily he might have been asleep. 

He didn’t need to say anything else, Richard realized. Perhaps he hadn’t needed to for quite some time, and only done it to humor him, put his anxious, inane curiosity at ease. He done it so deftly that Richard hadn’t noticed before now, hadn’t guessed that Thomas Barrow would have been just as content to curl up beside him until the clock forced their hand. 

It was his turn to make do, then...and he had the better hand, didn’t he? A handsome man, half asleep and holding on to him, grinning unselfconsciously as Richard ran his hand through his hair. It was heaven, or the closest thing to it. Something he could spend forever in. 

“I’ve never been like this before…” Thomas murmured. Richard nodded, and if he were as perfect as he wished he were, he’d have left it at that. 

But he had to be clever, had to lay down cement on a foundation that was already built, so he said: 

“Suppose you can’t ever be naked in the same way with one person as you are with another.”

Thomas shook his head. “No, I mean, I’ve _never..._ it’s never been like this.”

“Like what?”

Thomas lifted his head with a frustrated laugh. “Like _this.”_ He made a vague gesture with his hand over the scene. “I’m not being clever, Mr. Ellis, I’m too tired to be...I just mean _this._ I haven’t. Not for years, and even then…”

So he _did_ mean more than he pretended...but Richard found that he didn’t need to know the story. 

“...it wasn’t like this,” Richard finished for him, and Thomas relaxed back against his chest. 

“Is it like that for you?” he asked, a hesitance in his voice Richard hoped he could ease. 

“I feel like I’m nothing but myself...just easy, _comfortable,_ as you put it…”

“But you’re always like that—”

“—I’m not.” He had no idea how wrong he was; Richard prayed that when he did, he’d understand. “And never like _this_. Feel like Adam and Eve before the Fall…”

Thomas laughed softly. 

“People don’t think of us as something that’d come before The Fall.” 

It bruised more than he could have meant for it to. Someday Richard would have to explain why. But not yet, not in this place...not after everything he’d done to protect them from the rest of the world. 

“That’s because they know nothing.” 


End file.
